Author's Note: This is a little ficlet I thought up just in time for St. Patrick's Day. I'd been wondering for a while what Seamus' neighbors thought about his disappearances to England for boarding schools. One would think that, being Irish, they would have their own schools to teach young wizards and witches and disown anyone who went elsewhere. Then I thought, well, not if they lived in Northern Ireland. Then, somewhere out of all that, there came this.

Seamus Finnigan, IRA Operative

It was Wednesday night and the Raging Bull pub was suffering from the usual midweek slump. Only the regulars were there today and a single violin player scratched out tuneless melodies near the fire.

"Eh, Ernie, either find a song or stop torturing us with yer racket."

"Give it a few pints, Jeph, and then it won't matter," a gnarled old man said from his customary seat at the end of the bar, next to the wall. "He could play like he'd never touched a violin before and we'd clap and go on like 'twas the philharmonic."

Jephro the barkeep grinned and pushed another pint of Guinness down to him. "I'll just put that on yer tab, that right, Aidan?"

"Right-o." Aidan raised his glass to Jeph in appreciation, and then sunk his mouth into the foamy brew. A few minutes passed. Ernie placed his violin down on the bar and lit up his pipe. Jeph drew a pint for him and wiped down a few glasses. Just like always.

Then the door opened and all the pub's occupants winced away from the fresh March air that blew in and mingled with the warm, cloying air inside. None of them bothered to look up not even Jephro. It was probably just ol' Malachi, tossed out again by his beast of a wife. She was a business woman-type, even though she didn't work; always busy, hardly home to put a hot meal on the table. Poor bloke—

"Good evening," a crisp voice interrupted his stream of thoughts. Jephro looked up from the glass he was wiping and saw a stout young woman with long brown hair looking at him intently.

"Good ev'n, Miss," he replied. "How can I –er- help you?" This was not one of the customary Wednesday night occurrences. Strange women did not enter the pub and stare at him. It was disconcerting.

"Oh just give me a pint of ale, if yeh would," she said in a rich Irish accent, placing a fiver on the bar. He took the note and watched her, wondering if he'd seen her before. He handed her the pint. "Ye'r not from around here are you?"

"No, I'm just passing through on business," she told him with a smile. "It's a nice town."

"It's nice enough," he agreed, well aware that the entire bar had fallen silent and everyone was listening to him talk to the stranger.

"Nice enough? What's wrong with it?"

He gave her a bothered look. "Didn't say there was anything wrong with it, did I?"

"But don't worry, miss, there is," Aidan chimed in from his haunch at the other end of the bar."

"Ach, Aidan, don't you start up on one of your threads again," Jephro said irritably.

"One o' my threads? My thread?" Aidan laughed hoarsely. "If 'twere only mine, the whole town woulda plumb forgotten about it by now." Ernie picked up his violin and began to play a slow tune on it.

"I'm sorry," the woman broke in, "What thread?"

"Oh, it's just a few things a few people say."

"About a family here in town?" She pressed.

Jephro blinked at her in surprise. "Yes, how did you—?"

She laughed. "Oh, I'm from a small town meself and I know how every little town has its gossip. Its strange folk."

"Ech, our strange folk are a little more than strange," Jephro told her, showing his broken teeth.

"Yeah, those Finnigans are stranger than strange," Aidan agreed.

"The Finnigans? Why, they sound like good, upright folk."

"Sound like it, Miss—er—"

"Dougherty."

"Miss Dougherty, but that doesn't make 'em so," Aidan told her. Jephro feared for a moment that he was going to get up off his chair and sit down next to her so he could tell her exactly what he thought about the Finnigans. Fortunately, he didn't and Jeph thought he could still salvage the conversation. "Oh they're all right. Mr. Finnigan is, in any case."

"Oh, yeah, I agree with that. Mr. Finnigan isn't so bad but his wife and that lad of theirs. Bizarre."

"How so?" The woman leaned towards Aidan a bit, to hear him better. It all gave Jephro a funny feeling; she seemed just a mite too keen to find out about their business.

"Well, we hardly see that boy for one thing. He's off 10 months a year. Mr. Finnigan's always quiet about it, you know, doesn't like to say much. Just says his son's off in boarding school in England."

"Well, there's nothing too odd about that," Miss Dougherty said. "Lots of people send their children to school in England." Jephro silently thanked the pub gods. She wasn't going to be pulled in by Aidan's lunatic theories.

"Yeah, so they do and that wouldn't be so abnormal but that Mrs. Finnigan, she's from Tipperary. In the Republic." He shot the rest of a pub a meaningful look and they all murmured lowly in agreement.

"Is it bad to be from Tipperary here?" She asked, puzzled.

"Aw, come on, don't you see?" Aidan sounded disappointed that she hadn't followed where his argument was leading. "A Republican married to a North Irishman! Their boy is gone ten months of the year, the missus is very proud of her county. It only points to one thing!"

Their guest now appeared rather flustered. "And that is?"

"The both of them are active in the IRA!" There was a slight pause in the conversation. The rest of the pub muttered a bit at this and then turned back to have its own conversations. Ernie began playing a fast jig.

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe I follow you," the woman continued amiably, but now with more confusion in her voice then before. "How exactly does their son being gone away to school for 10 months of the year point to them being IRA operatives?"

"See, that just shows how you're not from around here. Mrs. Finnigan is an odd one. Always walking around mumbling about things to her husband. Wearing odd clothes. Hauling things she won't tell us what they are." Jephro found himself nodding unconsciously. "I stopped Mr. Finnigan and asked him about it one day. He didn't give me any explanation. Just smiled a bit nervously and said, 'she has her occupations.' Then he got all in a rush, said he had a meeting he needed to be going to and that was that."

"Aw, but he's always been like that, Aidan," Jephro broke in. "You can't fault him for his ways."

"No, he hasn't and you know it, Jeph. When he was a lad, he was one of the loudest boys you'd ever seen. Always up to something, always doing something fishy. Then he married that woman from Tipperary and it was all-fine for a while then gradually he got quieter. He quite the town's rugby team." Aidan said the last part viciously.

"Aidan here thinks it's a mortal sin that such a skilled player as Finnigan should quite before a disabling injury," Jeph told Ms. Dougherty.

"No sane man would!" Aidan burst out. "How could he do it? We won the regionals four years in a row when he was on the team. I tell you—there's something fishy about that woman. Then their son was born and it only got fishier. He was always doing funny things to people that no one would explain—"

"A sure sign of IRA training," Jephro put in. The woman watched them with a bemused expression on her face.

"I bet he doesn't go to school in England at all. They probably just tell people that so they'll have even less of a reason to look at them suspiciously. Probably send him to some IRA training camp in the South where he learns all sorts of vile things." Aidan gave his now empty glass a dark look, which vanished when Jephro slung him another one.

"Is he a bit drunk?" Miss Dougherty asked him in low tones.

"Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. But his is one of the things not even liquor can explain." He sighed. "He's always had that opinion about the Finnigans and he's not the only one who does. Mind you, not everyone thinks they're in the IRA but most are pretty sure they're in with something close to it. They're odd people. Odd people." He's eyes focused on a space over the Miss Dougherty's right shoulder and he was only vaguely aware of her drinking out the last of her ale and setting a quid on the bar.

"Thanks for the drink and," she nodded at Aidan, "the conversation. But I best be going." Jephro nodded distractedly at her and a gust of air filled the pub again and she was gone.

An hour. That's how long it had taken for her to sit in that pub and she could already feel the effects of the polyjuice potion wearing off. They hadn't recognized her; she'd known they wouldn't. It was one of her sister's hair and made her look different enough from her own self. So Bran was right. They DID have funny ideas about what she and Seamus got up to during the year. She laughed to herself as she trudged down the road to her house. She had thought up all the crazy stories she could, trying to guess what they thought about them but none of them had come close to the mark. Most of them had consisted of old Irish legends that she was fond of using to explain things she didn't want to associate with magic. Never had it occurred to her they might assume the only logical Irish explanation possible for odd secretive behavior. The Irish Republican Army, indeed! Just wait until Bran and Seamus found out!